Special Report

India to join the big league in Supercomputing

Rs. 5000 crores allocated in the XII Five Year Plan; Dr. Ashwani Kumar calls for a meeting of top scientists and leaders in HPC to define medium term action plan for scaling up the HPC

DR. Ashwani Kumar, Honourable Union Minister of State for Planning, Science & Technology and Earth Sciences, Government of India visited Pune-based Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), National Chemical Laboratory (CSIR- NCL), and Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) on Wednesday, the June 6, 2012. The visit of Dr. Ashwani Kumar has significance as the Indian Government is accelerating R&D in sustainable and alternate energy sector, high performance computing (HPC), infrastructure development and technology proliferation. Dr. Ashwani Kumar visited the National PARAM Supercomputing Facility (NPSF), which houses the PARAM Yuva, a 54-Teraflop supercomputing cluster, and the Bioinformatics Resources and Applications Facility (BRAF)

that houses the Biogene and BioChrome supercomputing cluster. PARAM Yuva facility is being used by researchers from various academic and research institutions of India for solving grand challenge problems in atmospheric sciences, nano sciences, and other strategic areas of engineering. BRAF facilities are being used by bioinformatics researchers in the country to carry out research in cancer, with international bioinformatics grid, early detection of cancer, biomolecular drug research. Dr Kumar also visited the Language Technology Labs of CDAC. C-DAC has developed a Reconfigurable Computing system (RCS) which can enhance the speed by 200-fold. C-DAC plans to reach heights of supercomputing within next few years to have capability of 100 petaflops. The Indian Government has already allocated Rs 5000 Crores in its XII Five Year Plan for the high performance computing. The Government plans to set-up several supercomputing facilities in a three-tier architecture comprising of several small scale HPC systems at various institutes, some medium scale HPC systems at regional level, and a few large scale HPC systems at the national

Dr. Sourav Pal, Director, CSIR-NCL welcomes Dr. Ashwani Kumar, Union Minister of State

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level. This will enhance the capability of the nation to bring it at par with international capabilities in areas of: Weather modelling Strategic science and technology Ocean modelling Disaster Management Space discoveries With a view of forging common strategy and a medium term action plan for scaling up HPC capabilities in the country, Dr. Ashwani Kumar has convened a meeting of top scientists and leaders in the field in New Delhi in the first week of July 2012.

The research being conducted and to be commercialized soon by NCL will lead to conservation of conventional and fossil fuels and subsequently add to the use of alternative sources of energy. The clean energy alternatives being developed by NCL will assist in mitigation of global warming and assist in the achievement of the Millennium Development goals. The CSIR-NCL is making Indian chemical industry globally competitive by designing new and creative process equipment and their integration with process chemistry to realize atom efficient environmentally benign processes.

Dr. Ashwani Kumar, Union Minister of State addressing CSIR-NCL/URDIP staff

Dr. Ashwani Kumar calls for major fillip to sustainable Energy Research; the Government committed to incentivizing renewable energy use. During his visit to CSIR-NCL, Dr. Ashwani Kumar inaugurated the Center of Excellence on Solar Energy, visited the laboratories including the Solar Power lab, Fuel Cell lab and interacted with the scientists and students. Dr. Ashwani Kumar also addressed the staff of the CSIR-NCL and CSIR-URDIP. A major programme on energy is continuing at CSIRNCL with a focus on search for novel materials using chemical tools of synthesis, chemical characterisation and computer simulation and turning them into devices for affordable technologies. Solar energy and fuel cell are two major thrust areas at CSIR-NCL. The CSIR-NCL is working on harnessing solar energy to produce thermal and electric power generation, in particular, organic photovoltaics and dye-sensitised solar cells, the important components of the solar mission projects to add 500 megawatt of power availability. In the area of Fuel cells, NCL's thrust is on polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC), which combines hydrogen and air to produce electricity, water and heat. This is an important alternative energy source along with solar and wind. The emerging applications of the fuel cells are in towers, replacement for diesel generators, co-generation in chloroalkali and nuclear plants and electrification of rural and urban locations using hydrogen from CNG. CSIR developed indigenous knowhow for key components of PEFCs, performance benchmarked against global standards, built 1 kW PEFC prototype plants and demonstrated durability.

Monsoon Forecast 2012

The monsoon had set on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands on May 23, 2012. It set over Kerala and parts of the coastal Karnataka and Tamil Nadu on June 5, 2012. The northern limit passes through Mangalore, Medikeri and Kodaikanal. The conditions are favourable for further advance in remaining parts of coastal Karnataka, Goa, South Konkan, South Maharashtra, interior Karnataka, some parts of Tamil Nadu and parts of North Eastern States. Long range forecast given in April was as follows: South-west Monsoon seasonal rainfall for the country as a whole is most likely to be normal (96-104%) with probability of 47%. The probability of below normal is 24% which is higher than climatological average of 17%. Quantitatively, monsoon rainfall is likely to be 99% of long period average with a model error of 5% (94-104%). The dynamical model using February initial conditions is likely to be 100%. Recently, global models have given predictions based on May conditions. Some of the models have given predictions below average, while others have also predicted as normal or even above normal. It has been observed that skill of these models is yet to be proven as there is no consistency. "We are analyzing conditions up to May for giving statistical forecast in 3rd week of June. We will also give dynamical forecast along with it", said Dr Ashwani Kumar.

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